Stretching the usefulness of an existing Financial and MRP Application

Companies are often faced with the tough decisions as to whether or not they have outgrown their existing applications.  One company we worked with was faced with this decision prior to their IPO.  Knowing that money was a concern, we started by looking at their business processes, the existing application’s capabilities and configuration.  What we found were untapped capabilities in the application, multiple databases and some process improvement opportunities.  The approach we took was to:

1) Merge the individual databases they had for each country into a single database and utilize the application’s capabilities to handle multiple currencies.
2) Upgrade the application to the most current version
3) Switch from the vendor proprietary to a standard database (SQLServer 7.0 was chosen)
4) Make a few minor adjustments to their processes

The result was they could now process month-end and quarter-end closings in about 1/5 the time it previously took and with fewer errors.  They could produce better reports using standard tools (Crystal Reports).  And just as important, they did not have to make a major investment in switching to a new tool.